Churchill Fellowship winners benefit Australia

After 10 years on a farm, Julie Shelton knows only too well how many early mornings, rainy nights, aching backs and blistered hands go into producing a glass of milk, a carton of eggs or a chicken for the dinner table.

Ms Shelton also knows how much red tape stands between the farmer and getting food on the table, which is why she and her husband have packed up their farm near Maleny to head overseas next month with their three-year-old son, Oliver.

Ms Shelton has received a Churchill Fellowship to travel to the US, Ireland and Italy to research impediments to small-scale, local food producers – and ways of better linking them directly to the people who eat their food.

“One of the things that I’ve found with a lot of the food products I’ve been dealing with is it’s a really big issue for farmers – the red tape, the rules and regulations and council requirements,” she said.

“It becomes one of the big barriers to them in being able to operate and make a living out of what they do.”

During their trip, Ms Shelton and her husband, Pat Forsman, will be part of the Australian delegation to Terra Madre in Italy, “the peasants’ United Nations”, an event where thousands of eco-farmers exhibit their wares and discuss farming practices.

Ms Shelton hopes to return to the Sunshine Coast with ideas for getting food from farmer to consumer.

Hopefully, these ideas will complement existing farmers’ markets and Community Supported Agriculture schemes, where consumers sign up to buy food by the box from farmers.

Ms Shelton is one of three Sunshine Coast residents among a total of 120 Australians who have been awarded Churchill Fellowships to conduct research overseas that will benefit Australia upon their return.

Doonan’s Robyn Grigg, a community development worker, has been awarded a fellowship to travel to Canada and Scotland to look at models for community supported health services, such as hospitals built and run by cooperatives in locations that would otherwise be without such facilities.

Ms Grigg, who works for the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, said doctor shortages and the closure of health facilities in Australia’s isolated and less populated areas were ongoing problems.

She is particularly interested in looking at examples in Canada, where communities in similar situations have established their own hospitals or health services.

“Canada is interesting because it is similar to Australia in several ways,” she said.